Windwalker Mists Classic PvE Guide

Talent Builds

Talents in Mists of Pandaria Classic are relatively set in stone as there are fewer talent options than on Retail. The primary swaps that you will make will be between Chi Wave for single target or Chi Burst for multi-target and Diffuse Magic to help with taking Magic damage or Dampen Harm to help with taking Physical damage.

Abilities

Instructions

Windwalkers generally prioritize our abilities by how much damage they do and the resources (Chi, energy, execution time) that they cost. There are a couple of general goals while playing Windwalker that should help with the bigger picture before diving into the priority lists below:

• Manage Energy and Chi – Outside of big Haste cooldowns, Windwalker’s damage is restricted by how many resources we can generate and spend. This means that sitting at the Energy cap or generating more Chi than you have space for typically results in lost damage potential. Your focus is balancing having enough Chi for spenders and using  Blackout Kick just enough to prevent overcapping without using it too much and not having the Chi you need when a bigger spender becomes available.
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• Keep Abilities on cooldown – With most of our Chi spenders having their own cooldowns, it is important to reduce the amount of time that these harder-hitting abilities are sitting off cooldown without being used. There will, inevitably, be overlaps where you’ll have to choose what to press based on the priority list. A key part of playing Windwalker recognizing that one of these situations is approaching and trying to have enough Chi for what you need to do.
• Tigereye Brew – This serves as a Windwalker’s primary offensive DPS cooldown. Spending Chi generates stacks of  Tigereye Brew that you can then use to increase your damage. The Windwalker 5.2 Mastery that is being used for Mists Classic;  Mastery: Bottled Fury increases the strength of each stack of  Tigereye Brew that you use and is generally the strongest Mastery that Windwalker had had until the 11.1 Patch of The War Within on Retail. The best part of this offensive cooldown is that it is significantly more flexible than the DPS cooldowns of other specs. Because you can use up to 10 stacks at a time and can store up to 20 stacks, you’re able to hold onto your stacks until you need them or will benefit the most from them such as paired with other cooldowns or a high damage phase of an encounter. Similarly, you do not need to wait until 10 stacks to use  Tigereye Brew, so you can use it at lower stacks for more frequent but smaller boosts to your damage.

Following these rules is the largest part of playing Windwalker. You may notice that “always be casting” is not one of our core tenets, as you are only pressing something if it aligns with these rules (something comes off cooldown, you are close to capping energy, etc). This means that as a natural consequence of following these, you may not always fill every GCD. WINDWALKER IS A SPEC WITH NATURAL DOWNTIME. This is not an indication that you are playing incorrectly. To execute these rules in the most efficient way, follow the priorities below with the goal of never using something lower in the list if it will delay something higher in the list.

Cooldowns

As said above, the safest bet is to use things as close to their cooldown as possible. However, if you can use most cooldowns at the same time without losing a cast of them, you’ll get the most out of them. You can read more about it in this article by Talby.

•  Tigereye Brew is your main DPS cooldown. It has up to 20 stacks and you can use up to 10 at once to increase your damage based on how many stacks you’ve consumed. You generally want to avoid capping 20, but you don’t need to use it just because it hits 10. Knowing when is best to use your stacks is what separates the good from the great.
•  Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger is a strong burst cooldown talent that can be used for single target or low-target burst damage. Xuen scales dynamically with your attack power, Crit and Haste (kinda), which means that if you drink an Agility potion while Xuen is active, he will start hitting harder, and when the Agility potion runs out, his damage goes down again. The same goes for trinket procs and the Haste from Tiger Strikes. Xuen is not affected by Tigereye Brew or anything else that increases your damage by a percentage; only direct buffs to your attack power / Crit rating / Haste rating will be transferred.
•  Touch of Karma can be used offensively, by taking damage that you would otherwise avoid. This isn’t recommended unless you know that you won’t need its defensive value. You can, if you want to go all in, use  Fortifying Brew before using  Touch of Karma to increase your maximum health and by extension, the size of  Touch of Karma.
•  Energizing Brew is closer to a rotational ability than a cooldown, but it something you want to use as often as you can get the full use out of it.

•  Storm, Earth, and Fire is an interesting spell and one that caused significant confusion when it was first released. There are a few important things you need to know about this spell:

  • Do not attack a target that has a spirit on it, the spirit will stop doing damage and you’ll still do the reduced amount.
  • You cannot put two spirits on the same target, casting the ability again while targeting a target that already has one spirit attacking it will despawn that spirit.
  • Each spirit has its own  Rising Sun Kick debuff and  Tiger Palm buff. They will not benefit from yours and you will not benefit from theirs. This means that, ideally, you cast  Rising Sun Kick and  Tiger Palm immediately after summoning a new spirit so that the spirit gets the benefit from these.
  • You should almost always use these any time there is more than one target.
  • You can use a macro to cast them on mouseover: “/cast [target=mouseover] Storm, Earth, and Fire” and another macro to dismiss both spirits at once: “/cancelaura Storm, Earth, and Fire”

Priority Lists

NOTES: Skip steps that don’t apply to your Talent build. Those priorities are meant to be used by people regardless of their build, and will include some steps that don’t apply to the recommended builds.

Openers

Use these ability orders to start pulls, these may change frequently over time. If you are starting a pull with more Chi, such as in M+, then simply skip the steps that get you to the necessary Chi level. See the Trinkets section further down for how on use trinkets may change your opener.

NOTES: Skip steps that don’t apply to your Talent build. Those openers are meant to be used by people regardless of their build, and will include some steps that don’t apply to the recommended builds.

Gearing

Stats

Windwalker generally follows this stat priority: Agility > Hit/Expertise (to 7.5%) > Haste to 9000-ish > Critical Strike > Mastery > Haste after 9000

Weapons and 1H vs 2H

Unlike in Retail, there is no normalizing between 1H and 2H weapons. For this reason you will generally want to use two 1H weapons unless your 2H weapon is more than 10 item levels above the average item levels of your 1H weapons.

Trinkets

•  Bottle of Infinite Stars drops from Elegon and is generally considered to be one of the strongest passive trinkets that Windwalkers have available in Phase 1. While Mastery isn’t a desirable as Haste, you can easily reforge a chunk of it to a large portion of a stat you may need more of like Haste, Hit, or Expertise. The large Agility proc is very useful and should be up, roughly, 30% of the time, on average. It is likely that you will use this trinket even over weaker trinkets that have a higher item level.
•  Terror in the Mists drops from Lei Shi and is another very strong passive trinket. The baseline Agility is very useful to have and while the proc that increases your Critical Strike may not be as strong as one that increases your Haste, Haste can be difficult to deal with if it comes in randomly, so Critical Strike is a very strong alternative.
•  Relic of Xuen is the strongest trinket that doesn’t come from a Raid. It is easily obtainable via the Darkmoon Faire and  Tiger Deck. Baseline Agility plus an Agility proc is something that is almost completely unheard of in the history of the game, which makes this trinket very strong and likely your best trinket until you get one that is a much higher item level.

“Best-in-Slot”

Best-in-Slot as a concept is one that is massively misunderstood. Generally these lists are only “best” until you have all the pieces, so you may pass on items that would be better for you in the meantime if you are strictly adhering to a “BiS list”. Because of the presence of Reforging, there may be several different paths to what is “best”. These lists may change slightly over time as not every iteration of every combination of every piece of gear was tested against each other.

Gems/Enchants

Gems

Gemming for Windwalker Monk is relatively straight forward, trying to maximize our Agility and Haste. However, gems can be a useful source of Hit and Expertise if you cannot get enough otherwise. Once you can get enough Hit and Expertise from the rest of your gear, swapping to Agility gems is likely going to be your first step.

• Meta Slot:  Agile Primal Diamond
• Red Slot:  Delicate Primordial Ruby
• Yellow Slot:  Deft Vermilion Onyx
• Blue Slot:  Glinting Imperial Amethyst
• Engineering Slot:  Smooth Cogwheel &  Fractured Cogwheel

Enchants

• Weapon – Formula: Enchant Weapon – Dancing Steel
• Cloak –
  • Swordguard Embroidery (Tailors)
  • Enchant Cloak – Superior Critical Strike (Non-Tailors)
• Chest – Enchant Chest – Glorious Stats
• Bracers –
  •  Fur Lining – Agility (Leatherworking)
  •  Socket Bracer (Blacksmithing)
  •  Enchant Bracer – Greater Agility (Everyone else)
• Gloves –
  •  Synapse Springs (Engineering)
  •  Socket Gloves (Blacksmithing)
  •  Formula: Enchant Gloves – Greater Haste (Everyone else)
• Belt – Living Steel Belt Buckle
• Boots – Enchant Boots – Blurred Speed
• Ring – Formula: Enchant Ring – Greater Agility (Enchanting)
• Legs –
  •  Primal Leg Reinforcements (Leatherworking)
  •  Shadowleather Leg Armor

Miscellaneous

Consumables

• Flask – Flask of Spring Blossoms
• Potion – Virmen’s Bite
• Food –
  • Feast: Great Banquet of the Wok or Banquet of the Wok
  • Personal: Sea Mist Rice Noodles, Seasoned Pomfruit Slices, or Pandaren Treasure Noodle Soup

Racials

There are some variance between the available races, but they are generally small enough to play what you’d like. If you are bent on maximizing your DPS then your best options are Pandaren, Orc, or Troll for Horde and Pandaren or Human for Alliance. If you are still not sure then play Pandaren.

Professions

Similar to Racials, Professions are close enough that you can generally play what you’d like. If you are set on min/maxing your professions and don’t care about cost then Engineering and Tailoring are generally seen as the top options. Blacksmithing is close behind and provides more flexibility in what stats you get than the other two.

WeakAuras

WeakAuras are ways to show things on your screen in a customized and personalized way. The best WeakAuras are the ones that you set up for yourself specific to your style and needs. However, many people have already made ones for themselves to share, so check them out and use them as bases to customize your own.

WAGO.IO

No WeakAuras are “required” but some are very useful:

• Babylonius’s WeakAuras – WeakAura group created by Babylonius (author of this guide), aimed at having all you need to play Windwalker.
• Mantipper’s WeakAuras – WeakAura group created by Mantipper (Admin of Monk Classic Discord), mainly aimed at Brewmaster but includes Windwalker and Mistweaver functionality.
• Storm, Earth, and Fire – This ability is historically very annoying to track both mentally and with WeakAuras so there may be better options available.
  • Kebab’s Version
  • Gagenrx’s Version

Macros

Don’t Clip Things

#showtooltip Tiger Palm
/stopmacro [channeling:Fists of Fury]
/stopmacro [channeling:Crackling Jade Lightning]
/stopmacro [channeling:Spinning Crane Kick]
/cast Tiger Palm

Change  Tiger Palm to whatever ability you want. This macro prevents you from cancelling the channel of  Fists of Fury,  Crackling Jade Lightning, and  Spinning Crane Kick early and missing a tick of damage. It is recommended to use this on your main rotational abilities as it’s very very unlikely that we’ll look to cancel these abilities. If, for whatever reason, you want to be able to cancel one or all of these abilities, simply omit that line from the macro.

Alternatively, you can simplify this macro to this:

#showtooltip Tiger Palm
/stopmacro [channeling]
/cast Tiger Palm

Focus Cast Macros

Windwalker has a number of spells you may want to target using the /Focus targetting option. You can replace the sample text in the macro below with spells such as  Spear Hand Strike,  Paralysis, or  Detox depending on your preference:

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,exists] Spear Hand Strike

Mouseover Macros

In some cases being able to cast spells/heals on targets without having to switch targets is extremely useful. You can use the following macro to make the desired spell cast on the target you are currently mousing over instead of your active target. Replace the sample text with the desired spell name:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Storm, Earth, and Fire

Ring of Peace Placement

The following two macros will place  Ring of Peace without having to use a targeting circle to do so The first will place if at your feet when pressed immediately:

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Ring of Peace

And this will place it where your cursor is currently targeting:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Ring of Peace